Nine people have died in Tanzania infected with the Marburg virus, a hemorrhagic fever similar to Ebola, the African Union health agency Africa CDC announced Thursday in a new report.
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The World Health Organization (WHO) announced last week that a suspected outbreak of the virus had killed eight people in the East African country.
Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan on Monday confirmed a suspected case of the Marburg virus in the Kagera region (northwest), on the border with Uganda and Rwanda, without disclosing the number of deaths.
In a weekly online briefing, the Africa CDC, headquartered in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, said that “10 cases have been reported, of which nine have already died.”
These figures reflect “the very high mortality rate in Marburg”, underlined Ngashi Ngongo, chief of staff of the Africa CDC, specifying that a team from the agency was deployed on site.
Ebola family
Of the ten cases, “around 281 contacts have been identified and are being followed,” he said.
-“In total, 31 tests were carried out, two confirmed and 29, I believe, which were negative,” he added, assuring that he had “confidence in the results”.
The region’s governor submitted a response plan estimated at $10.8 million (around 10.4 million euros), the Africa CDC said.
The region where Marburg was discovered was already the scene of a first outbreak of the virus in March 2023, which lasted almost two months and resulted in 9 recorded cases including 6 deaths, according to the WHO.
This new outbreak comes as the WHO declared on December 20 the end of an epidemic of Marburg fever in neighboring Rwanda, which lasted three months and left 15 dead, mainly affecting health professionals.
Marburg virus causes highly infectious hemorrhagic fever. It is transmitted by certain bats and belongs to the same family as the Ebola virus. Its mortality rate rises to almost 90%.
